


World Of Night

by Leyenn



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:17:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dance, even when you're standing still.</p>
            </blockquote>





	World Of Night

It's night, and we dance together. It's been a long time.

Love is something that comes upon you, I've learnt over the years. Something that makes you its instrument in this odd world, that takes you over and molds you to its will no matter what you think you can do to run from it. I've learnt that with her, the one lesson I could never learn with anyone else out here in this world of night.

It's cold as death outside. Always is. Much like this dance it's almost frightening in its closeness, a danger only inches from my fingers as I draw them through her raven hair and reach out to brush the window.

"Beautiful," she whispers, although she's not looking that way. Her head is still resting on my shoulder, where it's been most of the night, but I never doubt she can see it all through my looking. I nod silently and turn back from the freezing depths, into the only darkness more profound as she looks up into my eyes.

I drown, when I look down at her this way. Not in the traditional romantic sense - in a frantic neverending stream of emotions, a wondrous pool of sensation so far beyond the human world my mind was intended for that it could be terrifying if we weren't together.

I've often wondered how she lives with this: every day, every instant, a current that ebbs and swells in constant whirlpools around my mind, like a wind that intended to pass right through without notice but somehow found me in the way. A mind that shouldn't be what it is, shouldn't sense, shouldn't _feel_, should be blind to the amazing complexity that is this world around me... should be and is, unless she leads me in this dance together. It's a rhythm I've never known without her; the threads of life and living that hang in the air all around and weave themselves into the song no one hears. And then I _see_.

We dance alone, always: a private agreement, one we've held unspoken between us all these years. No one ever breaks the rhythm that binds us, and yet in those moments I know every being in our floating metal world. That eternal night still hangs endlessly outside, but nothing hides the warmth that clings on inside these walls. There is no 'dead' of night - night is full of life, a life no one feels but us together, an unstoppable unending pulse of living that fills our world, calling the beat as we dance.

They all think the night is empty, dark, lonely - something to be feared, to confront and fight. It's a thought I'd have had, although so long back I can't imagine the time - but the truth, the truth only she could ever show me, is something so simple they could never understand. It's always dark until you can see the stars, and I see them in her eyes... the stars she can show me that shine out of them all in their night when she brings me to this place, this place they think is empty darkness, where I can _feel_ the warmth of all the life surrounding us - that wind that circles and echoes forever... It's a dangerous, frightening, priceless gift I can never repay - a gift I take because she wants to give it, because she needs to share it, and because I've danced so long with her I've forgotten what it's like to stand still.

And so we stand silent again, and we dance together in the starlight to the music of souls.

  


*

  



End file.
